


muffled shutter

by wordcatchers



Series: to capture and never forget, never erase [1]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, for juminv week on tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 04:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10586307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordcatchers/pseuds/wordcatchers
Summary: He still photographs Jumin, and Jumin still allows him it. There's something effortless, easy to this relationship, but it doesn't mean it is unchanging. Something's shifting.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning and the end, unsaid words filter through from each of these boys.
> 
> [Prompt: photography.]

_did you know that you didn’t have to_ _  
_ _confront it all on your own?_

 

He sits across from Jumin, both drinking another one of the Hans’ exquisite family-owned wines, aged to a nearly fine perfection. The Seoul skyline at night is even finer than the wines, as he knows now not from one glance of his own sight, but from his friend’s words.

“You remember these buildings. The cascade of vibrant colors on signs and in windows, balanced out by interspersing white lights amongst darkened floors and rooms. And of course the dim yellow-orange of the streets and vehicles below us.”

Jumin pours back the remaining wine in his glass, wiping his upper lip with a napkin. He sighs, with a hint of wistfulness to it by V’s ears. “But you always preferred where you could photograph the stars, yes?”

V rests his chin in the palm of his free hand, the other tapping idly, softly on the side of his own empty glass. The city gave its own inspiration, and he had taken at least one-third of his portfolio within urban areas. But Jumin was right. Something about the edges of the city and beyond it appealed to him, even now. He loved the relative quiet, the peace it offered.

“Mmm, you’re right,” he says in return. “Do you remember how often we used to visit Chiaksan for one of my projects several years ago?”

Though he can’t see it all that well, the crack of a small smile shines brightly in Jumin’s tone. “Oh, yes. Eventually, we pinned down just the right times to visit as to avoid crowds, but you do know, I could have--”

V reaches out, resting a hand on part of Jumin’s. “But I didn’t _want_ you to clear out the park with your name. You know that. I’ve never wanted that.” Jumin’s hand stiffens just slightly under his touch, then relaxes. V looks in the other man’s direction, smiling. At the small sound of Jumin huffing, pulling his hand away, V breathes out a soft laugh.

“I should be happy that you never wanted to take advantage of my family name,” Jumin says, adjusting his tie, “After all, you know how many others...” He trails off, turning his head to look out the floor-to-ceiling window next to their table. They both know too well.

Clearing his throat, V pushes his chair back, getting up to his feet. He feels Jumin’s gaze on him, hears him stand as well, chair somewhat scraping on the floor.

“I’d like to go there now.”

If he once expected to hear any ounce of shock in Jumin’s voice at sudden requests like this, it had been well over ten years ago, but even then Jumin had been willing to do whatever V asked, because nothing he asked was utterly unreasonable. Even now, he knows there is more to V’s request. The park isn’t even open this time of night.

With his hand already reaching for his mobile, Jumin says, “I’ll phone Driver Kim, then, and we can be there in less than two hours.”

V nods, sticking his hands in his pockets, looking around at this renovated high-rise restaurant they had dined and wined in for years now. It always smelled slightly of cherries and vanilla, with a pleasing dimmed lighting. At one point, before Rika, when they were in their late teens, he’d teased Jumin about the ever present romantic air to this venue.

_“That’s the same for any place I frequent in my free time,” Jumin had replied, tugging slightly at one of his sleeve cuffs, “Romanticism was invented by those who could afford such luxuries, after all.”_

_“Curt as always, Jumin,” V had replied with a good-natured chuckle._

_“I only speak the truth, Jihyun, despite my father throwing such traditions away.”_

Even now, he still feels it, but romance... the idea of it, the entire notion had changed for him. He had thought he had found it personified in _her_ , but three years later and all that time spent mending himself, mending his _relationships_ with everyone he had ever tried to protect from her, nothing could come out the same, not even this longest relationship with Jumin.

“Where would you like to stay for the night, Jihyun?” Jumin asks a bit later on the elevator down. V hears the tinny dings as each floor passes them by, leaning against the back steel railing to stick to something steady, unmoving. “Driver Kim requires a structural destination for overnight trips.”

V lets the elevator ding twice more before answering. “Do you still own that cabin several kilometers from the park? I’d love to stay there.”

Jumin comes over and stands next to him, chin tilted upwards at a slight angle, likely watching the floor numbers continue to descend. It’s at this notion that V reaches into his satchel, locating his camera. Jumin hasn’t answered yet; instead, V acutely feels his friend’s attention on him.

“Don’t move, please, keep...”

“Watching these numbers?” Jumin proffers.

His heart does something odd, something he may have felt before; he files the emotion away, swallows harder than he meant.

“Yes.”

Though the vision in one of his eyes is nearly completely gone, he holds the other up to the viewfinder, focusing just to the left of Jumin’s face, stooping down and angling so he can capture the edge of those flashing blue numbers alongside Jumin’s partial profile. Shutter speed increased just a little, he takes five consecutive shots before standing up straight again.

The last ding comes and goes as he places the camera back into his bag, following Jumin out to the familiar vehicle. Once in the back seats, Jumin instructs Driver Kim to the address that V still remembers from nearly a decade ago.

He leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees, as Jumin sits back in his seat next to him, crossing his arms over his chest. Looking out of the window just to his right, a haze of muted yellow streetlights race past as the vehicle travels on. He knows just how constricted his sight is now, at about seventeen degrees in his best eye, the rest blackened out by trauma and time left untreated, something that had taken him years to accept, and even now he’s still working on it. His memory is his best vision, but… He exhales quietly, resolute in finding something positive.

All he knows is that at least _now_... Now he has all the time in the world to focus on the smallest of things that cross his limited sight. Forced focus, which in another world might be something akin to a superpower if he could choose when to utilize it.

Instead, the taps of Jumin’s fingers on his phone reverberate around his mind like never before. His friend’s certainly texting Jaehee in the RFA chatroom, telling her to move all his meetings tomorrow because of this spontaneous out of town trip.

“Please tell her I’m sorry for the extra work she must do now,” V says, turning his head to look at Jumin. The taps stop suddenly, then resume.

“She says thank you for your concern, but it is unneeded.”

At that, V smiles faintly, knowing the woman must be restraining herself around her superior as usual, as expected. But he can read through the lines. _Thank you_. Jumin was more than simply fortunate to have her by his side. He would need to work on his friend to give her another week of vacation. Slowly, but surely. He knows that he can’t heal anyone himself now, but he can at least help aid in their own self-driven process, if they allow him.

 _“Small steps are progress, Jihyun, much of the time even more so than large leaps based on faulty faith,”_ his therapist has told him more than once. His faulty faith had been shattered, and it still lay in some kind of ruins, dust gathered about it and honestly, he still needed to take a hammer to the glass shards and destroy it all for good, permanent erasure.

Yes, that is what he most wants to capture.

His fingers itch for the camera again.

Without much time until they’d be past the city proper, into a darkness that would even envelop much of Jumin’s sight, V reaches down into his satchel again, between his left leg and Jumin’s right. He’d color-coded his various lenses, but right now... he makes a small exasperated noise, casting his eyes upwards towards Jumin.

“Could you find my red-taped lens in here, please?”

Jumin blinks, a barely traceable note of surprise on his face for an instant, gone as soon as V registers it. Yet he can’t be sure that that was what he saw... so many variables, minute frustration given way to calm as Jumin nudges the lens against his hand, placing it within V’s palm once he opens it.

“Thank you.”

Jumin nods, no words, and once more leans back in his seat, closing his eyes this time. His friend is sharp angles mostly, but his skin always looked so... soft, almost like a blanket of freshly laid snow, even now. Not that V has ever really mentioned that to Jumin in those exact words, only once remarking how aesthetically contradictory, refined yet soft his features were, setting him apart in such a way that certainly intrigued everyone who was able to come across him in life. Jumin had only asked him then to tell the truth if he ever showed “softness” to anyone.

_“They don’t deserve to see it. Any of it.”_

_“Jumin…”_

_“I don’t wish to discuss my features any more, Jihyun. Please, take your photograph, though.”_

_He had sighed, retreated behind the camera’s viewfinder, and captured his best friend as despondent as he’d ever been allowed to see. It was… so very raw._

_Jumin was just barely seated, slumped down in an elegant chair catty-cornered from his bed in his penthouse apartment, an impenetrable glaze over his eyes. Arm lackadaisically draped over the armrest, he held an empty wine glass lazily by its grip, and though this all made for a fine piece of art, his friend was his friend._

_V had set the camera down for the rest of that night._

It was never all that often that Jumin lowered his walls as he had back then, and he remembers sitting in silence with his friend, across from him, until Jumin had finally made a movement: a shake of the head, presumably clearing his thoughts, and then asking V if he wanted more wine.

Now, Jumin rests his eyes next to him in this car, Driver Kim worlds away from them both. He fiddles with his camera equipment, snapping one lens off, the red taped one on, and surveys Jumin in various zoom increments, turning the camera about until he finds a pleasant composition. If he waited _just_ long enough until another streetlight came into view… He counts the seconds, timing the interval between their passing, until… _click._ A few more, and review.

One is nothing but horrible: _delete_ , three are mediocre, but two are all right, and in one Jumin had popped his right eye open; grinning, V knows that one’s a keeper. He knows he’ll be able to tell more though, once he has access to a computer in Jumin’s cabin (as well as Jumin for his back-up vision). They would probably be there within another hour or so, and at the thought of that, feels his eyes growing a tad weary.

With the camera still in his lap, V slackens his grip on it and rests his head against the cushioning behind him, breathing out softly. It feels safe here, the silence between him and Jumin as comfortable as it has ever been for two and a half decades now.

The last image in his mind is that photograph of Jumin, one eye open, looking into his lens. He was relaxed everywhere else in his body, save for that one sharply focused eye. In some sense, this is why he loves taking photographs. They allow him to capture these contradictions of humans, of nature, of everything. A flower growing in the most difficult of settings, much like how he and Jumin had grown up despite everything attempting to squash them.

They’d always had each other, and for as long as he could remember, and for as long as he is able, Jihyun knows he will always capture this relationship in photographs.

 

 _something to describe to me_  
_when this sight departs,_ _  
leaving only your words_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the purposes of this fic (and any others I make in the Mystic Messenger universe), MC is known as Sujin. In this particular Jumin x V universe, it is a canon divergent 707 x MC route. (In the sense that V... well, lives, and he still retains a bit of eyesight.)
> 
> [Prompt: realizations.]

_do you need me to forget?_ _  
_ _you nearly do it without a word._

 

He wakes before V, the other man’s turquoise hair spilling over the top of his right shoulder, tickling at the skin of his neck. Years ago, Jumin might have nudged his best friend off him. Now, though, he only blows a slow, soft breath across V’s forehead. He knows that as his friend’s sight continues to fade with time, his other senses are becoming more attuned.

Still, V doesn’t startle awake. Jumin shuffles away as V slowly blinks his eyes open, glancing up and over at him, then moves back over to his side of the back seat, stretching his neck and popping it.

With a yawn, V asks, “Have we arrived?”

Jumin first gestures up towards the left with his head and eyes. The cabin sits atop a short yet steady incline, several stairs leading up to the front door. V follows the gesture, and Jumin confirms with a verbal yes. “Driver Kim has taken a few things in. He’ll give the place a go-around, then we can go in.”

At times like these, V idly wonders how this sense of familiarity, the lack of questions, might look to those outside of their friendship. If he were Zen, he’s certain he wouldn’t have accepted this so easily. It was more than likely that Zen would tell Jumin off for giving Driver Kim all the responsibility, and promptly would have gone inside himself to do the job, practically dragging Jumin along with him.

But… he isn’t Zen. That isn’t their relationship dynamic.

He knows that Driver Kim is paid handsomely for all of his duties, and he’d rather just spend a couple more minutes in the vehicle with his friend while things are settled in the cabin. This was what they’d fallen into two decades ago, a product of their upbringing -- it never meant that they did not value Jumin’s employees. After all, V made it a point now more than ever to show his own appreciation to them for all they continue to help his best friend with.

For instance, Driver Kim kept Jumin from recklessly driving on his own.

At the sound of Driver Kim’s feet coming closer and closer, he perks up, finding the man’s figure approaching the driver’s side from the front of the car. Mostly blurry, but he recognizes the outline and general details of the uniform quite well. And his voice even better.

“Everything is up to standards and where it should be, Mr. Han,” Driver Kim states as he opens Jumin’s door for him and bows.

Jumin nods curtly, stepping out of the car. “Thank you. You can come back…” He pauses, turning his head back to look at V. “Tomorrow evening?”

V smiles genially. “Yes, that will work out perfectly. And -- wait, Driver Kim, you don’t need to come around here. I can get out on Jumin’s side.” He grabs up his satchel, placing his camera in it, and scoots over to where Jumin had been sitting, hopping out next to his friend. “See? Just fine. Thank you.”

After another bow between them, Driver Kim holding his lower and for a bit longer, they part ways with the older man, watching the vehicle roll back onto the road and towards Seoul again. A slight wind ruffles V’s hair as he turns about, resting the camera satchel across his body, running his eye over the old building. Flashes of memories cross his mind: the first time he and Jumin had come here on their own, newly minted adults at the age of twenty. They’d spent four days exploring the area, inside and outside of the house. Mostly outside, except for...

_“I’m staying in today,” Jumin had said, leaning against the doorframe to V’s room. He had been packing his camera already, but at Jumin’s words, something had changed. He could go out, yes, and perhaps he might later, but looking at Jumin on that third day, V had pushed the equipment away, electing to stay in as well._

_It had been thoroughly worth it._

Jumin’s hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades now, somehow tentative yet firm simultaneously.

“Let’s go on in,” his friend says, pushing him forward just barely with the tips of his fingers. It might be something of a test, to see if he wants any help. Jumin was never one to explicitly ask if someone needed him, not even V. He finds it endearing most of the time, in this situation more than ever. With his white walking cane out and about in Seoul or other populated areas, a few well-meaning people might do unnecessary things for him, such as opening a door or pointing out a step.

Jumin, however, does none of that unless asked. (Or perhaps, if it might benefit locking down and closing a profitable business deal for C&R. He would do much then that he wouldn’t otherwise.)

It’s something he loves about his friend, and at this particular point, he is grateful. He wants to see, to keep going as long as he can doing everything he can without any help. His cane is enough to tap against the bottom step, just so he knows exactly when to lift that first foot, gauge the height.

Jumin opens the door, gesturing V inside. Turning his head about, he sees that the entryway is mostly how he recalls it from memory; wide and somewhat cavernous, low lights decorating the walls leading on further. He follows Jumin, and only Jumin through this constricted sight. There’s a bit of hair next to the nape of his neck that seems out of place, but V doesn’t mention it. Jumin would only spend needless time trying to fix it for no one in particular.

Once they reach the main living area, Jumin wordlessly takes his walking cane and props it up against a short cabinet next to the kitchen entryway. V puts his hands into his pockets, watching his friend move about some more, straightening a few things as usual, because he simply _cannot_ have things off even by a few centimeters.

Pulling his phone out of his back pocket, V glances at the time. _23:57._ Ah.

If he wasn’t already feeling a yawn come on before looking at that, he might have blamed it on suddenly becoming cognizant of how late it’s becoming. He feels more and more like an old man these days; Jumin’s words had held some truth when remarking on his long sentences in the RFA messenger years ago. Despite his attention to shortening his expressions, he still slips up all the time.

All of this has aged him in ways that didn’t end with loss of sight. It’s still… disconcerting, sometimes. He feels a cold wash over him thinking about it now, followed by a rush of warmth and… no, no, no. He can’t feel faint, not here, not _now_. He grits his teeth, hoping...

“Your face doesn’t hide a thing,” Jumin says, clasping a hand around one of his forearm. V looks up, searching Jumin’s own features. _(When had he gotten here again?)_ Lips thin, brow set. He breathes out some kind of broken up laugh, not really a laugh at all. But he doesn’t tug his arm from Jumin’s grip.

Sometimes he hates how easily Jumin can read him, but knows he can always pay him back in kind. It’s merely what has come with over twenty years of friendship, even if a few of those years had been strained to near threadbare strings, physically and emotionally starved.

Jumin’s fingers tighten around his arm, and he’s lightly pulled over toward the couch where he sits down next to Jumin, hardly realizing the steps he’s taken. His mind is growing full of white noise and static again, her name drawn up into a blaring siren. He doesn’t _want_ to feel so old, he misses the years before, before his chest constricted like this, before he couldn’t make out the entire range of vision that had originally been granted him.

“This is a panic attack, isn’t it?” Jumin’s clear voice cuts through the fog and static. He slowly turns his head towards his friend, noting the slight creases of worry lining his thirty-year-old face. Without thinking much of it, V reaches up with shaky fingers, pressing the pads against Jumin’s skin, wanting to smooth it all out. _You shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes,_ he thinks. The self-blame piling up again, he nods tersely as his heart races.

He doesn’t register the contact until he feels Jumin’s chest rising and falling against his own, when he finally breathes out, then in, again… and again. It’s done at Jumin’s count, whispers into his ear, louder than a stereo to him right now. They finally drown out the other thoughts and memories, focusing on breathing patterns instead and the feeling of Jumin’s arms wrapped around him.

_It’s only us._

_It’s only us._

It passes over within five minutes, though as always, it’s felt like thirty or more to V. He pulls away from Jumin, running the back of his hand over his forehead, slick from beads of sweat. Jumin continues to watch him, his head slightly tilted to one side.

V cracks a faint smile. “Thank you. We should… go to bed now.”

“We should,” Jumin replies, patting his knees succinctly, then gets up to his feet. V follows, again as Jumin takes him to his own room, overlooking what he remembers to be a stunning view of the forest surrounding the Han cabin. At this point in the year, he’s certain to spot several shades of red, orange, and yellow come morning. Perhaps he’d even take some photographs.

“I’ll see you… later today?” he says, turning about to see Jumin already shutting the door. His friend pauses, cracking it open to look back inside.

“Goodnight, Jihyun.”

“Goodnight, Jumin,” but the door closes on the comma between. He knows Jumin has heard him, though. All he wants is to collapse on the bed in this room and forget everything except for the sound of his best friend’s voice, perhaps counting sheep for him as well.

And so he does just that.

⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤

“--come on, Jihyun, we need to…” a voice cuts through his sleep, then a hand pushes against his side, somewhere between gentle and pressing. V moves his head just a bit, propping his chin up on the pillow he’d crashed on several hours ago. “Jihyun, it’s almost 8am already,” the voice, which he now realizes is Jumin’s, continues, the pressure against his side moving to his hair, peeling it away from his better eye.

V turns over onto his side, searching upwards with his eyes until he lands on Jumin’s face.

The way sunlight…? was that what was illuminating his friend’s form? the way it frames Jumin...

 _“Beautiful,”_ he murmurs, languidly reaching the nearest arm out halfway, before he lets it fall, draped over the side of the bed, fingertips brushing the hardwood floor.

Jumin sighs, but it doesn’t sound exasperated, merely some emotion between amused and bemused. V feels like giggling, but settles for a slow smile as he stretches, moving to a sitting position. At some point during the night, he’d rolled up into some kind of half-formed blanket cocoon. Fortunately, he doesn’t recall any nightmares. Perhaps it has something to do with this setting, or Jumin, or both wrapped together as safe place and safe person.

Just as Jumin moves to stand to his full height, V whines and moves forward, wrapping his arms around the other’s neck. He doesn’t need to see much at all to piece together the memories of Jumin’s reactions to this morning neediness before: something of a small disgruntled noise, paired with a roll of his eyes and half-grimace, but they’re only a paper thin mask. Actions speak louder than words, and Jumin had never pushed V away during these moments. Nor does he start to now. He only wraps his arms under V’s, helping him up, letting them both rest against each other for several more seconds, as if they’re the only two in existence.

V pulls away first, rubbing at one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. With the other, he can’t really see Jumin, but he knows he’s just about half a meter in front of him. “How are things back home?”

“They’re fine,” Jumin says, “Elizabeth 3rd is shedding as normal, Sujin has reported to me. Assistant Kang is handling moving my meetings well... one would have needed to reschedule anyway, because they’ve taken ill.”

“I’m still a bit surprised that you let Sujin look after Elizabeth 3rd, considering her living situation with Saeyoung and Saeran.”

He’s back on his bed, slipping his pants off from the day before as he speaks. Typically, he takes showers in the evening, scrubbing off the dirt from the day, but two showers in this one day couldn’t hurt. Especially considering the nearly six kilometer hike up Chiaksan to the peak. Despite the autumn season, from past experience V’s aware that a bit past halfway up, they’re going to need to strip off their coats.

Yes, two showers in one day wouldn’t be bad at all.

Jumin’s made his way over to a chair in the corner of the room, eyes trained on something outside the room’s wide window. Or at least, that’s the best it looks like to V.

“Sujin is aware of my misgivings towards Saeyoung’s treatment of Elizabeth the 3rd, and rightly keeps his contact with her as minimal as possible.”

“That’s good,” V says, tugging his sweater off. With only his underwear on now, he picks his cane up from the bedside stand and starts to make his way to the bathroom. If he remembers correctly, it should be just a few meters from this room and to the right, but… He pauses at the sound of Jumin’s feet padding towards him.

As Jumin passes him by, he swiftly says, “I’ll get the water running for you.”

V blinks in Jumin's direction quizzically, then follows the sounds of his steps, hardly needing to double-check with the cane. He’s torn between asking Jumin about his reasoning for doing this for him, and just staying silent. Logically, it _is_ quicker, more efficient, for Jumin to go on ahead and do this.

It’s also very kind. Either or both reasoning works, but something is still prickling at his skin. The tone of Jumin’s voice had felt... off. He figures his mind must be playing a trick on him.

He hears the water hit the shower floor as he turns into the small bathroom. There’s a larger one off the master bedroom, but it’s farther away, and they really do need to get going soon. Jumin brusquely notes the towel on the rack just outside the shower for him, and promptly after vacates the room, shutting the door behind him. V can’t even get a decent look at his friend’s face as he goes.

⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤

To Jumin’s mind, he calculates that three things are very wrong:

  1. V hadn’t brought anything to wear for today.
  2. They have a car to take, but V can’t drive now as he had in prior trips.
  3. His tangled threads are _pulsating_.



Fortunately the first is easily solved: V can wear what he had slept in or borrow something of his, as he always keeps a good week’s worth of clothing at this cabin. The second… well, Jumin _can_ drive if needed or wanted, more likely the latter than the former. He remembers which is the brake pedal and which is the gas, how to reverse, all the necessary basics. And with V alongside him in the passenger seat, Jumin has more than enough reason to be careful.

The third, well. That was technically the only thing "very" wrong.

He squeezes his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into the skin. Why now? He’s always loved and cherished Jihyun, his closest friend and longest-lasting friendship. Seeing him so casually and intimately this morning shouldn’t have done this to him, shouldn't have created any type of base desires in him... they’d been like this before, changing so easily in front of each other. He doesn’t want to think about it, so he… simply doesn’t.

Ten minutes pass by, and he’s spent all of them in the RFA chatroom, mostly reading a conversation between Saeyoung and Saeran, with Yoosung coming in halfway through to lament about the difficulty of veterinary school. Saeyoung commented on how quiet he was being, to which Jumin had sent over his “unamused” custom emoji.

_“I’m fine, Saeyoung. Unless you come into contact with Elizabeth 3rd, that is.”_

_“Oh, Cat mom! Your precious Elly is safe with my super SUPER lovely girlfriend, you know that.”_

_Yoosung had piped up then: “You still haven’t proposed to her??”_

_Saeran, next: “No, he hasn’t. Also, should we even be discussing this on here?”_

_“She already knows I’m going to someday!” Saeyoung replies, followed by that emoji of him hunched over on the floor. If it wasn’t Saeyoung’s emoji, Jumin might believe it was too exaggerated. However, for all he knows, Saeyoung might have just thrown himself on the floor like his custom emoji-counterpart. He can’t help but grin a bit at the imagery of it._

“Something amusing, Jumin?”

He looks up, sees V brightly smiling over at him, one towel wrapped around his waist as he rubs another smaller one through his damp hair. When he pulls it off his head, his hair’s a mess -- sticking up in some places while his fringe completely hides one of his eyes, droplets of water trailing down and over his cheeks, his nose, and over partially parted lips.

Licking his own without even realizing it at first, Jumin pinches the bridge of his nose, dragging his fingers down to pinch at his nostrils and close his eyes to the sight for a moment. He opens them again, looking somewhere just to the side and past V, and says, “Nothing too much. Only Saeyoung being Saeyoung.”

“Hmm, yes, that is enough to amuse most anyone. Add in Saeran, and they bounce off one another seamlessly. Though,” he says, turning back around to head back to the bathroom, “that would seem appropriate, given that they’re twins. I’ll be done in a few minutes...”

Jumin makes a noncommittal noise, turning back to his phone. Yoosung has signed off to go to class, leaving only the Choi twins and himself remaining. Best to log off as well, he supposes. If the twins stay around chatting to each while in the same house, that’ll be their own problem.

_“V is almost ready to go hiking, so I’ll take my leave. Have a good day, you two, and tell Sujin hello for me, and that I hope to receive an update on Elizabeth 3rd three times today.”_

Without waiting to receive any replies, he signs off.

When V returns, he’s wearing the same outfit as he had yesterday.

“Oh, I meant to say…” Jumin half sputters out, “You can wear something of mine, if you’d prefer?” He stands up, moving towards his own room, disgusted with himself for not remembering to ask earlier, but V places a hand on his shoulder just as he’s about to pass him. If anything, V can place where people are almost entirely by sound alone now, though it certainly helps that they're the only two here.

“It’s fine, Jumin. I’ll be alright in this.”

“Mm, okay.”

He looks V up and down, chewing on his bottom lip.

⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤

He needed to continue _not_ thinking about it, these rather new emotions he does not want to classify, because then they would certainly exist (and therefore, it would be difficult to continue denying them after that point).

The classical radio playing on their drive to the park helped.

(But he still noticed Jihyun leaning against his door, arm propped up against the window of the car. He did not have the luxury of spending any more of his attention on him, though, if they wished to make it to Chiaksan safely. Which they did.)

The initial part of their hike up Chiaksan helped, as the cold winds burned through him, as V stopped every so often during the easier parts of the trail to take photographs of the nature around them. Jumin noted that V especially enjoyed capturing the small bodies of water they came across, snaking around the area.

It’s when they’re past the temples that they have to make a decision, because the intermediate and advanced parts of the hike can prove difficult for anyone, let alone a legally blind person. V is adamant that they continue, however, because in his words: “Why else did we come out here for the day and pack a lunch at that?”

Jumin doesn’t have a good enough retort for that reasoning. He… isn’t sure what to make of himself now. It feels surreal, watching V look at him in this moment with his mostly clouded over eyes, but he knows V is focusing in on his face, trying to figure him out.

He sighs, resigned to it. “You’re right. Let’s go on, but…” he hesitates, swallowing. “Just let me take your hand when it gets more difficult, all right?”

“You don’t even need to ask,” V replies, smiling back at him.

Sometimes he almost wishes that V wasn’t so damn nice, but as normal the thought fades as he continues to watch V take photographs, snatching a few of him when he’s turned away. He doesn’t notice all of these instances, but he notices enough to ask why.

“You can take photos of me anywhere, Jihyun. Why not focus on Chiaksan while we’re here?”

V grins, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “Why not take photos of my favorite person anywhere I can? Chiaksan is still in these; you only make it more beautiful.”

Favorite… person. He doesn’t think he’s heard that from V in several years, maybe even longer than that. His breath slightly catches in his throat and he can only nod, still trying to understand what it is about those words now that make his heart skip a bit. Years ago, V’s favorite person had been Rika, as clear as day to anyone who saw them together. But that hadn’t been love, it hadn’t been like this.

Right? Is this what he’s feeling? Love, an additional subset added on to how he already felt for V?

He needs to unravel this realization.

  
_you set your tripod up at the peak,_   
_wrap your arm around me,_   
_countdown from five and_ _  
it’s all over too soon._


End file.
